


Dark Poison

by fhartz91



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Angst, Blood Drinking, Elemental Magic, First Time, Inspired by the Dark series of romance novels, Kissing, M/M, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Romance, Sexual Content, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements, Undead, Vampires, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-16 00:08:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3467135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/fhartz91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine is a Carpathian, an ancient creature, similar to a vampire with the same needs and limitations, searching for the missing half of his soul. But unlike others of his kind, he is cursed with a deadly touch, which makes him an outcast even among his own people. Unable to find his mate, he buries himself beneath the earth until he can find the strength to walk into the sun and end his misery.</p><p>Almost a century later, Kurt Hummel, a man with an unusual gift to control water, finds himself studying marine toxins on a deserted island when a beautiful, haunting man literally rises from the ocean and and wants to claim him as his own…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I’ve been working on this forever. It’s an AU inspired by the ‘Dark’ series of romance novels. I’m not going to be using characters or specifics from those books, so you don’t need to be familiar with the series at all to appreciate this story. All I have done is to borrow the concept of the Carpathians and their lifemates. Having a gay couple is a concept I don't feel that the original author would tackle in her series, so where this story starts with a connection to the book series, it will quickly pull away and become its own independent story. All in all, if you enjoy dark, vampire, and soulmate stories, or you like mystery and adventure, I think you'll enjoy this. Please give it a read :)

It had been days since the call rang out, alerting the Carpathians to the presence of the Undead closing in on the small village under their protection. The battle had been fought and won, and the numerous piles of dead bodies lay burnt and twisted at the hunters’ feet. Villagers had been saved and lifemates protected. All that remained on the battlefield after the acrid smoke lifted and the skies cleared were a band of mighty brothers…and him.

Blaine had done his part - in some ways more than his part - in the gruesome fight considering he had no lifemate of his own to keep safe…and no family among those still living. He had endangered himself for the safety of others, and he had fought well. Not that he was asked. Not that he was wanted. He was considered just as dangerous as the Undead, and in many ways, less welcome. The other men eyed him warily, cursing him with their glares, threatening him with the curl of their snarling lips.

Regardless of their obvious disdain for him, honor bound him to the task of protecting his people. As a Carpathian, he felt duty required that he defend those who scorned him. Every time a call rang out, he answered. He fought just as hard, if not harder, attempting to replace actual emotion with blood lust and a thirst for vengeance. He tried to see what he knew were red blood stains against crystal white snow, but to him it was simply varying shades of gray against gray.

With no lifemate, no children, no love to hold his sanity together, he had lost all sense of color long ago. Emotion barely held on by a thread thinner than a single spider’s silk. The haze of crimson clouding his molten gold eyes spoke a warning to the others – Blaine’s time was growing short.

He would soon turn into the same monster they had fought and conquered.

Undead.

Vampire.

The eldest of the brothers stepped out from among the crowd – his muscular body weary, his flesh scorched and battle scarred. He would need to go to ground soon to heal the wounds littered across his chest, and others deeper would require time and the skills of a healer to mend. Regardless of his imminent need, he stood fierce and confronted Blaine, speaking for the group.

“Your task is done here, Wanderer,” the man said, speaking in more of a guttural growl than a voice. That was as much of a  _thank you_  as Blaine could expect, but it wasn’t a  _thank you_  at all.

It was a cue for him to leave.

Blaine smirked, the sly twist of his lips coming nowhere near to touching his eyes.

Standing among people he should be able to call brothers, Blaine had no friends here. It seemed the other males around him would have been willing to sacrifice one more innocent life, maybe even their own, if they could have ensured that he not appear.

The ring of alphas tightened in front of him, pushing him back toward the forest from where he had come, bounding through the foliage to the battlefield in the form of a massive black panther. Blaine eyed one at a time the tall, dark, muscular men with their murderous stares trained on him. They could glare all they wanted, but they could not touch him. The slightest touch from Blaine - even the slap across his face that so many of them craved to give him - would lead to certain death. That’s how Blaine killed the vampire menace. He was the only one who dared get close to the Undead, to embrace their fallen brothers bodily (since many of the vampire legions were once Carpathian males, doomed without a lifemate to the change that made them soulless monsters), and condemn them.

In a morbid way, it gave him a sense of belonging, a momentary sensation of physical contact.

Those who  _should_  have embraced him, even with just their minds, turned their backs on him.

So Blaine turned his back as well, leaving the village in peace and venturing into the dark.

Blaine.

The Wanderer, as his people referred to him.

A Carpathian with no home.

An outcast.

A disease.

The nightmare that kept evil things awake, fearful of the dark.

 

Mortals live in a reality they believe to be safe from the nightmares of the Old World. Stories about werewolves and vampires, and ghouls that hide under beds, feeding off children’s souls when they sleep, are fun ways to be frightened, but monsters are easily shut away in books and movies, dismissed as legends with no basis of fact.

But there are places in the world – the modern, shiny, technologically advanced world – where Old World myths exist. In the Carpathian Mountains, a once thriving society - a race of people who are nearly immortal - clings to life, but with an inexplicable lack of female lifemates and no new children born that survive past infancy, more men lose the will to live and become vampire…or simply choose to meet the dawn, to save their brothers from the painful task of having to destroy those that they once loved.

As frightening as the prospect of becoming one of the Undead is, there are fates even more terrifying. Of all the legends meant to keep unruly Carpathian children tucked securely in their beds, there is none so blood chilling than that of The Wanderer. The Wanderer, a Carpathian himself, is known for killing any creature - man, animal, or Undead - with a single touch. It is rumored that he lures victims into the forest with a seductive song and eyes of golden fire, but once he touches the hands of his intended victims to draw them in and suck their blood (in the manner that all Carpathians must feed), they disintegrate and blow away, their bodies becoming nothing more than a fine, powdery dust.

Always a killer, always hungry, always on the search for fresh blood he can never taste.

So the Wanderer hides in the forest, starved to insanity from lack of blood, lying in wait. It is said of the Carpathian people that he usually takes the form of a massive jungle cat, crawling through the underbrush, ready to pounce.

Those outsiders unfortunate enough to have seen him in his human form rarely survive to tell the tale, and survivors have been known to go mad shortly after.

Of course, as with many legends, the reality of Blaine’s story is far less sinister, though still terribly tragic – but only for him.

Blaine didn’t start out life as a monster. Far from it. A loving, childless, Carpathian couple found Blaine orphaned on the mountain, without a stitch of clothing on his malnourished and frail body, sitting beside the corpses of his parents, their bodies in full rigor. Carpathian deaths, especially in the wilds away from the village of their ancestors, were not uncommon. Actually, such deaths were all too common, but why this couple would have abandoned the safety of their people to raise their child alone would forever be a mystery. Children were precious – too precious to risk for any reason - and there was safety within the bounds of blood.

To abandon the village in favor of raising a child alone was unheard of, so naturally speculation abounded with regard to the nature of their demise. The couple buried the poor souls, being sure to mark their graves with rough stones and white flowers, and returned with Blaine to the loving, open arms of their people. The couple devoted their lives to Blaine (a name they gave him since they could find none other among his meager things – it means thin, but lean and strong, which fit him to a T since he was so painfully underweight when they found him, but he had such a thirst for life, an unquenchable spirit).

Blaine wanted for nothing - he was spoiled with love and affection - but he never felt that he belonged on the mountain.

For one, he didn’t look like his brothers. Where most of the males in the village grew tall and pale, with dark hair and dark eyes, Blaine was shorter in stature (which many excused with the understanding of his rough start to life), but he had tan skin and golden eyes. Where Carpathian men spent their lives in search of their female lifemates – the other half of their souls, the light to their dark – Blaine discovered very early on that if a lifemate existed for him, he would definitely not find them among the  _women_  of the village.

In a vision, Blaine had seen the eyes of his lifemate, the skin, the hair, and they definitely did not belong to any woman who lived or would ever live, and no one of their kind.

He confessed this to his adopted parents, and though they loved him unswervingly, they found his inclination impossible to accept. They tried to impress upon him that a Carpathian man belonged with a Carpathian (or sometimes, a special human) female. This match was predetermined, predestined – the universe having already chosen a mate for him before his birth - and when those two perfect halves of one soul came together, they could create the most beloved thing in the Carpathian world – a child.

Blaine listened to their rhetoric and logically he understood it, but in his heart he didn’t believe it to be true – not for everyone, and especially not for him. He explained his feelings over and over with the same passion that they explained theirs, but his words fell on deaf ears. He resigned himself to not finding a lifemate at all, but that option seemed to be worse than the former.

To not have a lifemate meant to abandon one’s self to a slow decent into madness, and eventually – either at the hands of his brothers or the light of the dawn – death.

Blaine’s adopted parents worried for him. Often times they would instruct him to focus his thoughts on the beautiful woman his lifemate could be. Carpathians believed that they could touch the mind of their lifemate, wherever they existed in the world, even possibly across the spans of life times.

Nothing but death could keep lifemates apart, and even then, fate did some negotiating.

Blaine humored them. He allowed himself to be chanted over, he meditated in the way that he was taught, he recited the ancient pleas to the ancients to guide his visions, but still, when Blaine pictured his lifemate, it wasn't a voluptuous maiden he saw, but a lithe human man, with skin so pale it appeared as white as the virgin snow on the mountain tops, and eyes so gloriously blue that the sky herself must have lent color to them.

Word about Blaine’s  _stubbornness_  got out in a round-about way. His mother, distraught over her son’s chosen destiny, sought out help for what she thought might be a sickness. None among their kind had ever heard of a male who did not long for a lifemate. (His mother did not mention Blaine’s belief that the one who would bring light to his darkness would be male, in fear that he might be sentenced to death.)

Once word circulated, Blaine became an outcast, and even without a verdict on the subject from their prince, he was shunned by all. No one acknowledged him. When they saw him approach, they turned and walked away. Only Blaine’s parents spoke to him, and by doing so, they were outcasts by association.

Not long after, Blaine came of age, and with a heavy and regretful heart, he left the home of his adopted parents – for their sake as much as his own. They were lost in the forced solitude his presence had sentenced them to, and without contact from their own kind, they had begun to wither. Blaine left them no note, no word of good-bye, touching their minds only briefly while they slept to leave them with images of the years they had spent together, of the good times of love and joy that he would always cherish, that he had only known because of them, and that he would always be thankful for.

Blaine knew in his soul that he was not of the mountain, so he went in search of what he figured was his own clan - others like him, or at least, more accepting of ones like him. He traveled the world over numerous times. He felt a certain kinship with the water, an undeniable pull to be near it, so he began there, following where it led and working his way through towns and cities, rivers and forests, by waterfalls and lakes. He even risked crossing the treacherous seas, with no place to go to ground for rest (where his kind must go during the heat of the day lest their bodies burn), in search of the place where he belonged.

For centuries, Blaine journeyed the world alone, and with every step he suffered a terrible loss as moment by moment, day by day, hope within him began to fade until it was little more than a single smothered ember slowly growing cold.

But it flared anew when, right at the dawn of a new era, he heard of one who might have the answers he sought. It was a long shot, little else than a dream, but it was more than he had.

A lesser - possibly even wiser - man might have turned down this particular aid. The roots of that knowledge, he was told, were deeply engrained in black magic, and would come at a terrible price.

Blaine knew that all magic came with a price - that part could not be avoided – and rarely was it ever something as simple or common as money.

Feeling more lost and alone than he ever had, with no people to call his own, his mind blocked off to all who once loved him, he went in search of it.

Deep in the heart of the rainforest, Blaine found her – the witch he was promised would hold the key to discovering his people…and his true identity. If he wasn’t a Carpathian of the mountain, then what was he? He asked the witch for the truth about his origins. She promised him a way to find the answers, but told him that it would take him on a quest that would force him to give up his claim to all that he held dear. He would never be able to touch those that he loved, would never again know the sweet taste of sustenance. He would find no shelter among the people of the world. But worse than that, he would forfeit all that was yet to come. She spoke to him in vague commands and warnings, and he accepted them all, making the decision to find out what he needed to know, and then afterward greet the sun.

She created for him a glowing orb of radiant light, gathered from the life force of the forest and mixed with a potion that included a vial of his own blood. She told him that if he followed its trail, it would reveal the secret of his beginnings. Without a single other word of instruction, the orb took off immediately after being released from her hands and Blaine followed obediently where it led. He tracked the orb for seventeen years. It took him through underground caves and volcanoes, and above the canopies of trees. It threw him in the path of danger and sometimes it didn't let him sleep. When the light had finally faded and his journey came to an end, he found himself, sickeningly, maddeningly, at the foot of his birth parents’ grave.

Looking down at the flattened earth, the outline of the plots defined by weathered rocks and the skeletal remains of once beautiful, blossoming flowers, Blaine knelt on the ground, bowed his head in reverence…and gave in.

It was all over for him.

He was worn, weary, and spent.

He had nothing, so he would return to nothing.

It would have been a simple thing to wait for sunrise and become ash beneath its golden rays, but he decided, in the end, to exile himself instead.

Since he felt the pull of the water so strongly, it was to the ocean that he banished himself.

He searched the seas and found the spot that the last piece of his shattered psyche told him he was looking for. He sank to the ocean floor, embracing the pressure of the water bearing down on him and the shifting change in temperature since it gave him the illusion that he could actually feel. There he dug his grave, and in that grave he lay - a pariah, a festering scourge beneath the vibrant sea, in a place where no fish swam and coral ceased to grow.

Blaine's soul had died centuries before he buried himself in the sands of the Pacific Ocean. Now he would wait for his body to petrify.

There he stayed till time no longer had meaning, and the end of one day blurred into the passage of a hundred.

Long years passed, but however long, Blaine did not know. He had stopped trying to track the passage of time. What did it matter anyway? Without his lifemate - that one person meant for him - life didn't interest him. Beauty, pain, life, death - they were all abstract concepts that didn't apply to him anymore.

In the dreamless, stone sleep of the dead, his visions haunted him – the blue eyes, the pale skin, the chestnut hair, wavy and soft between his fingers. His lifemate. Blaine tried to block the visions out, to keep them from driving him further over the brink of insanity, but the images became stronger, more persistent, with details added: a voice - high and clear, pure as the songs of the birds that rang throughout the home of his childhood, a scent of jasmine and vanilla, every breath sweet with it even when Blaine did not draw one, a touch – light and delicate, around his hairline, over his cheekbones, traveling down to his neck…

Blaine tried to reach out with his mind to find the source of these visions. Could it be? Could there possibly be a lifemate for him walking the planet, unaware of his presence and yet dreaming of him?

Blaine called out to him but his mind had become weak, and the source of the visions too far for him to touch. He captured them most clearly when his lifemate (if it truly was him) seemed to be scared or in pain. At those times, Blaine suffered with his lifemate, and would try his best to send out songs of comfort, words of longing.

Blaine tried day after day to touch what was his and hold on, but his lifemate always seemed to flee from his grasp. Blaine couldn’t conjure a complete picture of the man and couldn’t find his name. Something strong blocked him when he tried to delve too deeply into his lifemate’s mind, but Blaine just knew that there was something special about this man, something that spoke of power…something that attracted trouble.

But in his state, beneath the water, entombed by sand that didn’t offer him the same restorative life as the soil on land, he did not have the strength to go in search of him. Blaine started to despair, thinking he would lose his chance forever.

Until he felt it - something pressed into the ocean, had reached with long, seductive tendrils to lure him from his grave. It vibrated in his veins - the song of the one person whose blood sang only for him.

His lifemate was there, short miles away, on an island nearby that had cropped up while Blaine remained a stranger to the world. It had started out life as a sandbar and grew. Now it teemed with life and had become the home of the one person Blaine needed most.

Every time the man touched the water, Blaine saw him. The ocean itself filled Blaine’s mind with pictures of him.

Blaine’s love…his life…his salvation…

And he was in mortal danger.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for this chapter - talk about the death of Kurt's mother, some minor mention of blood and surgery, and an extreme reaction to poisoning.

Kurt tilted his head toward the dazzling warmth of the midday sun and smiled wide. This heat was a pleasant departure from months of suffering through the sub-zero temperatures that plagued the Eastern Seaboard. He had boarded his flight leaving JFK airport to a backdrop of dismal New York weather – the sky a dull and gloomy gray, the wind, chill and sharp to the point of making his thick wool peacoat useless, and coating the streets and sidewalks, a fair layer of grimy, waste-water slush. He had taken to wearing five layers of thermal socks on his feet and cramming them into a pair of insulated snow boots designed especially for ice-fishing that he bought two sizes too big to accommodate the bulk. But after five minutes of sprinting down Broadway to NYU, he couldn’t feel his toes.

It was too heavy for Kurt - too oppressive, too suffocating - and that wasn’t just the cold.

Everything exciting about living in New York City had worn thin for Kurt. The one place he saw as his Mecca all throughout high school had started to encapsulate him, and he refused to assimilate.

When American Airlines flight 1278 lifted off the ground, Kurt left the dreariness of big city existing behind, winging his way toward a life on a different hemisphere, to gaze upon a new skyline, and to see the world from a divergent angle.

Not everybody agreed with his decision to give his life a 180 degree makeover. Giving him the last of one hundred and thirty-seven hugs good-bye, one of his dearest and oldest friends, Mercedes Jones, repeatedly warned him to be careful. She had done something similar - lived the life of a transient in L.A. while working toward landing a recording contract. She spent more time than she would admit living out of her Ford Fusion. After draining her resources, she moved to Manhattan, bunking with an ex-boyfriend while she tried her luck at getting a deal with producers there. Mercedes told Kurt that the West Coast was a whole different universe compared to Ohio or New York.

She said that like it should deter him.

Kurt didn’t know if it was a casual warning or if she was trying to put the fear of a god he didn’t believe in in him, but Kurt wasn’t scared. He couldn’t wait to experience this _different universe_ and everything it had to offer.

Besides, there was one piece of information that he hadn’t divulged.

His move to San Diego, to collaborate with the researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, was only a small reason for his upheaval.

This trip didn’t stop at California, and that was the most thrilling part of all.

Through his tiny window in coach, Kurt watched as the plane rose above the clouds and the sky instantly became clear and blue. Blue was such a comforting color for him. Everything he was, everything he loved, surrounded the color blue in one shade or another.

As he left New York and Ohio farther behind, the gap created by this distance from his old homes filled up with hope.

If that wasn’t an allegory for Kurt Hummel’s life, then nothing was.

Over the course of his flight, he noticed the quality of the light outside transform. It became sultry and golden. He could almost taste its sweetness, its purity. He was pretty sure a breath of it would feel like falling in love. Of course, _being in love_ wasn’t a concept he was personally acquainted with, but as a romantic, he tried to find it everywhere – in music, in his work, in his family, in the water.

Especially in the water.

His lower lip stung, bitten a dusty rose by how he spent most of the day trying to keep from giggling like a ninny. That bit of discomfort didn’t bother him, not as he headed toward his destination, this final leg of his journey bringing him to the tropical oasis where he would spend the next few months in his own private paradise – utterly alone. He watched the foamy spray rise as the bow of the boat dipped, the water ricocheting off the hull and splashing him in the face. He let it, closing his eyes and absorbing its coolness into his heated skin. For a boy from Ohio who had never seen the ocean until he entered college, he felt completely at home here, on the vast reaches of the turbulent Pacific. A thick mist clung to his body, the harsh sea salt bleaching his meticulously coiffed hair, the over-bright sun freckling his pale skin, but he had stopped caring about his appearance (for the duration of this trip, anyway) because for the first time in his life he felt that he was truly blossoming into his own, in the place he was always meant to be.

This sea and this sun – he belonged to them. The drops in his hair, the tan on his skin, were all ways in which the sirens welcomed him home.

This was not the path Kurt initially imagined his life taking. He’d had dreams of performing on Broadway, like his lifelong idol, the incomparable Patti LuPone. Growing up, he acted when he could, sang where he could. He longed to be adored by millions. He auditioned for and was accepted to NYADA – the premier performing arts school for musical theater in the country. But it turned out, even with the work and devotion he put into in, that dream of theater stardom wasn’t for him. It wasn’t where his ultimate destiny lay, and in a thousand ways, he was glad. Though he will admit (if only to himself) to a second’s hesitation when he handed over his boarding pass to the agent at the airport, thinking that he would regret his decision to trade in his fantasies of following in Patti LuPone’s phenomenal footsteps for a major in marine biology, but looking out at the perfection and solitude of the open ocean, he knew he had made the right decision.

Here on this boat, bouncing through the waves, Kurt got a taste of true freedom. He felt an overwhelming sensation of peace – a peace that pervaded his heart as it thrummed with the speed of the vessel and permeated his lungs as he breathed in the ocean air. It spiked straight to his soul, which reached out beyond the limits of his corporal form in search of…something.

He hadn’t come to terms with that part of his journey yet – the part that had nothing to do with his research and everything to do with the visions in his head.

Visions he’d been wrestling to make sense of his entire life.

Visions and voices had been Kurt’s constant companions, whether he liked them or not. He never spoke about them to a soul – only his father knew, and that happened by accident. As Kurt grew older, he became better able to control them, to silence them so that they didn’t take over his every minute with their insistence to be heard, their need for his attention.

The voices came from all around him, from everyone he met. He automatically created a connection with people whose hands he touched, soaking in their pain, their happiness, their distress, to the point that he refused to shake hands anymore. He claimed to be a germophobe, and had an obligatory bottle of Purell on hand to keep people from pressing the issue, but still most everyone thought him rude because of it.

What did he care, as long as he could sleep at night?

But the visions – those he had yet to learn the origins of.

Which was why this exile was ideal.

He sensed the boat’s captain become alert as the man saw something in front of them that Kurt had his eyes shut to.

“Look out!” he called down from his deck. “Water wall ahead!”

 _Water wall_. Kurt laughed. It was only a wave, _maybe_ large enough to capsize their vessel but Kurt highly doubted it. Not if the captain Scripps hired was as good as they claimed. Kurt didn’t open his eyes. He wasn’t concerned. The water would not hurt him. He felt in his mind when the captain turned his head away and Kurt raised a hand to the oncoming wave. In seconds it parted, clearing a path for their boat and leaving them to pass through safely.

The captain raised his head from where he had it tucked into the crook of his arm to shield himself from the impact. He did so warily, expecting a cold, hard smack of water to the face, but then straightened in the sunlight, eyes darting around at the ocean in surprise.

“Well, I’ll be dipped,” he said, searching ahead and behind for the wave that they somehow managed to elude. “How in the hell did we miss that? It was right in front of us!”

 _Good captain, but a little dense_ , Kurt thought, shaking his head at the man reaching beneath his cap to scratch at his scalp in confusion, wondering to himself if the hours staring into the sun had messed with his head.

Of course, that didn’t mean that Kurt was about to run up to the man and reveal his secret.

Kurt had always been able to manipulate water – any fluid actually. Around him, outside him, inside him, it didn’t matter. He had mastered the art of bending it to his will. It was a skill he was born with and he used it to great advantage, especially with regard to his research.

Kurt grew up thinking that there was no reason for him to have these supernatural talents. As far as he could tell, no one else in his family – maternal or paternal – possessed any similar or unusual gifts. He had entertained the thought that he was adopted, but that lasted only a second. One look at his mother’s photograph was all the proof that anyone needed to know that Kurt Hummel was, without a doubt, Elizabeth Hummel’s son.

He also believed that his father didn’t have a clue about his abilities, until one day when Burt Hummel caught his eight-year-old son stirring his chocolate milk at the breakfast table without using a spoon. Burt was a stoic man, and as he looked into his son’s face, terrified at being discovered, he went wordlessly about the business of adding creamer to his coffee. Then he sat beside Kurt, pushed the mug in front of him and said, “Would you mind mixing that for me, kiddo? I don’t feel like cleaning a spoon.”

“B…but how did you know?” a young Kurt asked his father, stirring the hot coffee in the mug with a twirl of his finger.

“I’m your father,” his dad had answered with a laugh. “How could I _not_ know?” He reached across the table and ruffled his son’s hair. “You know, I may not have known much about raising kids before you came along, but I did know that it wasn’t exactly normal for a baby to make formula fly through the air, or put pictures in your head so that you’d know exactly what he wanted.”

Kurt remembered his father telling people that he had been an effortless baby. Not until that Sunday morning at the kitchen table did Kurt understand what he meant.

Burt Hummel never expected to have a son like Kurt, but he told Kurt that his mother knew. His mother didn’t have Kurt’s ability to bend water, but she could read minds, and to an extent she could predict the future. Elizabeth knew her son would be unique. When he was in her womb, Elizabeth told Burt that she could communicate with their boy. Burt often times saw her in her rocking chair in the nursery, reading silently, or in deep contemplation with her eyes closed, a smile on her face, humming an airy tune. She surrounded herself with music and literature, and spoke to herself in French in the hopes that her son would learn these things, and that they would one day appreciate them together.

But there were parts of the future that Elizabeth Hummel did not predict, or if she did, she kept them to herself.

Elizabeth’s pregnancy was not an easy one, but every time her doctor diagnosed a problem, it would be rectified by the next day, without the aid of medication, bed rest, or any real effort on Elizabeth’s part. High blood pressure, diabetes, edema – the doctors were baffled as to how it disappeared, but Elizabeth knew.

She had faith that it had to be her son.

The day of her C-section, Elizabeth delivered a healthy seven pound, eight ounce baby boy. But during the procedure, her OB/GYN discovered holes in her placenta and a rupture where it had torn from her uterus. The tear would have – _should_ have – bled profusely…and it did the moment they removed Kurt from her body. Clotted blood shot through her veins and raced toward her heart. Unsure which battle to tackle first, doctors barely had time to put her under before they began performing surgery to save her life. In the end, neither battle mattered. Elizabeth lived only long enough to see her special baby born. She died on the operating table minutes later, but as she faded away, as the life blinked out of her eyes, she did not worry about her son. She knew in her heart that he would someday move oceans and empty seas. He had the power to make things happen, as long he believed.

Unfortunately, Kurt Hummel, for the longest time, believed in himself the least.

Kurt had never met his mother, but he felt a strong connection to her – a connection that transcended this life that he lived. His feelings had nothing to do with God or religion – he didn’t believe in any of that. But he felt that her soul dwelled within him, in some way, in some form, and he carried her wherever he went. Kurt had her startling blue eyes, her chestnut-colored hair, her snowy complexion. His father claimed that Kurt had inherited her impeccable ear for music, her eclectic fashion sense, her overwhelming strength, her bravery, and her compassion.

Which was why there were days that his father kept him close, and others when he couldn’t bear to look at him.

He swore he heard her voice in his head. Normally, it would have gotten lost among the other voices, except this one he didn’t actually hear at all. It didn’t have a tone or a texture, it didn’t resonate amid the din. He _felt_ this voice, its presence clearing away the clamor to make itself known.

Time passed, and Kurt realized that as much as he felt his mother as an entity within him, the voice was something expressly different. It had a source – a real, viable source, somewhere in the world. A source that sought him out, that seemed to know him, and out of alarm, Kurt put up mental walls to block it, but those barriers didn’t always hold, weren’t always stable. They lowered whenever he was sad or scared or angry, and at those times, the voice spoke to him, or sang to him, in a foreign language that he understood without knowing _how_ he understood it. It was a comfort to him, but he didn’t abandon his walls to it completely. There was still a chance that it could be a trick – a way of building up his trust to win him over and then tear him down.

Years of bullying taught him that.

It took Kurt a while - years, until he reached high school - for the voice to connect itself with a vision. A singular pair of golden eyes that steadily began to turn scarlet in his mind. Dangerous eyes. Eyes he could get lost in. Eyes he felt himself surrender to more than once.

Eyes that called him out here.

In the last few months, serendipity had been Kurt’s friend.

“Oh…oh Jesus fucking Christ…oh…”

Kurt grimaced as he sensed the only other traveler on this voyage lean over the side of the boat and wretch…again.

Yes, serendipity had been Kurt’s friend…but only just.

“How much longer till we reach the island, captain?” Kurt called up to the man behind the wheel, whose eyes peered past the reflection of the sunlight on the water, still in search of that phantom wave.

“Oh, about another hour, probably less,” the captain yelled down with a smile for his eager passenger. “We’re traveling at a good clip, and the water looks relatively calm here on out.”

“Great,” Kurt remarked. The sooner he was off this boat, the better. With every caress of the water on his skin, he longed to say _to hell with the boat_ , dive into the ocean’s refreshing depths, and paddle his way out to the island on his own. Kurt was an accomplished swimmer, but he wouldn’t make it to the island before nightfall, so the boat was a necessary evil…along with the other passenger losing his stomach over the side.

Kurt sighed when he heard uneven footfalls make their way from the aft as the one stowaway from his life in The Big Apple finally stumbled his way to the deck.

Sebastian Smythe - or Captain Innuendo, as Kurt liked to refer to him - attended NYU along with Kurt. He was about Kurt’s age, had close to the same physical stature, but with a broader build, a sun-kissed complexion, and way more muscle mass from years of playing lacrosse and water polo (a factoid that he brought up to Kurt at every possible opportunity). He was outwardly attractive, but whatever appeal he had was entirely skin deep, lost whenever he opened his mouth. It was impossible to have an intellectual conversation with the man. Every other word out of his mouth was either a comment about Kurt’s ass, a lewd remark, or a recommendation as to where and how they should have sex – recommendations that he made loudly, no matter where they happened to be.

He smirked, he didn’t smile, and he leered at Kurt uncomfortably, in a possessive way that he had no right to.

Sebastian had no attachment whatsoever to the marine biology department. He studied finance, on the road to earning his DBA, but something kept him tethered to the applied sciences, and Kurt had begun to speculate that _something_ was him. He didn’t want to touch Sebastian’s mind to find out. He didn’t want to open that channel because once he did, it would remain open.

It was a one-way street. Kurt didn’t need to worry that Sebastian would learn _his_ secrets, but Kurt didn’t want to be privy to any of Sebastian’s secrets, either.

He didn’t have to touch Sebastian’s mind to find the answer.

Kurt’s suspicions were confirmed after he was awarded this internship.

Kurt had learned about it through the science department grapevine, mutterings from the grad students that a pharmaceutical company had showed interest in their department’s research into the practical applications of marine toxicology with regard to degenerative diseases – research that _Kurt_ was heading. On the off-chance there was even a grain of truth to those rumors, Kurt rushed into his professor’s office, resume and grant proposal in hand, demanding to be put on the top of the list.

He was the only student who applied who was remotely qualified.

He was ecstatic when he found out he had won, but his excitement was apparently premature.

The pharmaceutical company backed out last minute.

The school was willing to go ahead with the proposed project _provided_ that Kurt could locate private funding.

He had no idea who in the world he could go to for that amount of money. He sat down in the research lab to start a list of companies and government agencies who might show interest in his project, but starting the process of begging for money would push back his research by a whole year, maybe even three.

He compiled a fairly long list of prospects, but he didn’t feel like he had much to look forward to.

Kurt didn’t know how Sebastian found out the details exactly, but by late afternoon, he had stepped up with break neck speed to finance it, out of pocket, without any provisions or strings attached as to how Kurt should allocate the funding or conduct his research.

Except for this escort to the island, which hadn’t been a part of the original plan, but since Sebastian’s trust fund made this trip possible, Kurt couldn’t exactly tell Sebastian to jump overboard…no matter how tempted he was to do just that.

Kurt didn’t need to shift his eyes away from his view of the water to see Sebastian lumber over to him. Sebastian wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and shoved the violated white square of fabric back into his pocket, pulling out a small cylinder of Dramamine that he’d been popping like Tic Tacs since they left the dock – not that it was doing him any good. There was more Dramamine polluting the ocean by now than there was anywhere in Sebastian’s body.

Kurt didn’t greet Sebastian when he approached, his infuriating swagger exaggerated by the fact that Sebastian had no sea legs. Kurt had been taught that if you ignore someone for long enough, they’ll give up bugging you eventually and go away, but Sebastian Smythe had obviously not been taught the same lesson. He walked right up beside Kurt, invading his personal space, leaning close into him so that their exposed forearms touched.

This wasn’t the first time Sebastian had touched Kurt without permission, but it was the first time since they’d been on the boat (as Sebastian spent nearly the whole trip bent over the side), and when Sebastian’s skin brushed against Kurt’s, not only did Kurt cringe, but something deep within his mind growled.

“Sick again?” Kurt remarked with disgust, turning his face into the wind to avoid the smell of vomit that surrounded Sebastian like a sour cloud.

“Just a little, babe,” Sebastian replied, his voice a roughened version of his usual smooth speech, burned raw by the amount of stomach acid searing the lining of his throat.

“Don’t call me _babe_ ,” Kurt grumbled, sidestepping away.

“Okay, sweetheart,” Sebastian volleyed quickly, making Kurt roll his eyes.

The boat hit a swell, jostling them, and Sebastian immediately threw a hand over his mouth, his cheeks puffing out like he was trying to hold in whatever he had left.

“Don’t all rich guys own huge yachts that they learn to pilot when they’re in the womb?” Kurt asked, turning green himself when he heard Sebastian gulp.

“Not me,” Sebastian said, mimicking Kurt step for step when he tried to get away. “To be perfectly honest, I hate boats and I hate the ocean.”

The growl in Kurt’s mind grew louder the closer Sebastian came. It was indistinct, indecipherable, so there was the chance Kurt was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t in his mind. It could be his stomach. The last time he had eaten they had been on dry land, but with Sebastian by his side, his head throbbed and his stomach started to twist, so Kurt couldn’t tell either way.

“So, why are you out here?” Kurt asked. “I mean, this trip is all boat and ocean. Wouldn’t you be much more comfortable in your penthouse in Manhattan?”

“Probably,” Sebastian agreed, leaning down to hook his chin over Kurt’s shoulder, “but this particular boat has a spectacular view.” Kurt didn’t glare at the familiar touch, but he pointedly ignored Sebastian. Sebastian waited for a reaction, but when he got none, he let out a frustrated breath and moved away, appearing to finally get Kurt’s point. But Sebastian crossed behind Kurt to move into his line of sight, and Kurt knew he wouldn’t be able to turn away again.

Kurt had to play nice with Mr. Moneybags if he wanted his island.

“Besides, we never get any time alone…” Sebastian said, his smirk widening, taking on a bloodthirsty quality that gave Kurt the shivers. “To talk, I mean. What is it you’re doing out here in this Godforsaken place that you can’t do in New York? What are you trying to accomplish?”

Kurt raised a challenging eyebrow – a look he reserved for extreme ignoramuses.

“Are you really interested in my… _work_?” Kurt asked, letting his voice drop a bit, using it to draw Sebastian in.

“Yeah,” Sebastian said, taking the bait. “I’m interested in what it is that you… _do_.”

The growl in Kurt’s mind became a full-out roar when he leaned in, his lips barely an inch from Sebastian’s mouth. This sound barreled to the forefront. It wasn’t muddled, but clear as polished glass. It was primal. It demanded obedience. It set the hairs on the back of Kurt's neck on end. Kurt knew he was being scolded.

Now he needed to find out by _whom_ …

“Well then,” Kurt said, letting his eyes flick down to Sebastian’s waiting lips once before he started to pull away, “why didn’t you read the prospectus that was given to you when you decided to fund the project?”

Kurt had a fleeting thought that perhaps he shouldn’t question Sebastian’s motives. He definitely shouldn’t be looking a gift-horse in the mouth, but he was honestly offended that Sebastian wanted in his pants so badly that he didn’t even glance at the proposal, didn’t show any respect for the immense amount of work that went into Kurt’s grant application before he whipped out his checkbook. Did it really matter that Sebastian was blind to the importance of the project he was funding as long as he was willing to fund it?

Yes, if that funding relied on Kurt showing his gratitude while lying on his back. That was something Kurt wasn’t prepared to do – not for this project, not for anything.

Outside of any moral objections, Kurt was saving himself, as old-fashioned a concept as that was, and Sebastian Smythe wasn’t going to wrench that away from him for all of his ability to write checks.

But Sebastian’s eyes had gone dark at Kurt’s question, his expression solemn and drawn.

“Because frankly I saw _your_ name and the words ‘Alzheimer’s research’ in the same sentence, and I knew this was a sound investment," Sebastian snapped, and this time _he_ was the one who took a step away.

Kurt watched Sebastian prop against the railing and his own vaulted, self-righteous ego deflated. The growling ratcheted up a step, sounding more threatening as Kurt’s resolve softened, and Kurt threw up a mental wall to block it out.

“My grandmother is in the advanced stages,” Sebastian said while looking down at the railing under his arm, stabbing a manicured fingernail into the weathered and peeling laminate on the wood. “She practically raised me.” Kurt put a light hand on Sebastian’s arm and he tensed. For a second, Kurt thought Sebastian might shrug him off, but he put a hand over Kurt’s and squeezed gently. “Not a single thing you’re doing out here with your little snails will get FDA approval in time to help her, but at least…”

Kurt saw Sebastian swallow hard.

 _Little snails_.

Kurt held on to those two words as the rest rushed by.

Sebastian _had_ read Kurt’s prospectus, or had gone to the trouble of having someone else explain it to him.

Could this sarcastic, hyper-sexed, chauvinist ass act be a front?

“I’m sorry,” Kurt said. He reached out his other hand to put on Sebastian’s shoulder, but then pulled it away when the growling breached past Kurt’s mental wall.

Kurt flinched. In all these years, that had never happened before.

Sebastian smiled sadly, eyes trained on the railing.

“It’s fine. I mean, how could you know, right?” Sebastian pulled his hand from Kurt’s grasp and adopted that irritating smirk again. Sebastian wore it like armor; he knew it would push Kurt away. This conversation had hit too close to home.

How could Kurt know that Sebastian’s grandmother was afflicted with the same disease that Kurt was on a mission to fight?

He could have read Sebastian’s mind.

Or he could have asked. That would have worked, too.

When did Kurt stop remembering how to act around humans? Nine times out of ten, he preferred spending his days in the lab with his _little snails._

And why not? It was a relationship that was predictable – one he could rely on.

The engine on the boat sputtered and died down, the momentum of the vessel decreasing, rendering them adrift. Kurt looked to the captain who caught his gaze and pointed straight ahead. With a glance up Kurt saw it – Island Designation 567.8.

His new home.

His eyes swept over it from end to end. They were still several miles away, but that didn’t make looking at it any less exciting - this strip of white sand dotted by a line of trees and clusters of metamorphic rock. Kurt stared at it in awe, but Sebastian’s smirk fell clear off his face.

“This…this is your island?” Sebastian asked snidely, but Kurt didn’t pay attention to his tone. There was nothing in the world that he would let dull the glory of this moment.

“This is it,” Kurt sighed, a tremendous relief lifting from his body.

“This is as far into the shallow water as I can take her,” the captain announced. “I’ll moor here…”

“And I’ll escort Kurt to the island,” Sebastian intervened, racing to the stern to meet the captain and untie the dinghy.

“Great,” Kurt said, “but I’m driving. I can’t let your throwing up get in the way of navigating.”

“Ha-ha,” Sebastian remarked dryly, climbing down deftly to the inflatable. The captain helped Kurt hand down his bags – one duffel of his clothes (which amounted to a small collection of swim trunks, old t-shirts, a wind breaker, and a few light sweaters that he could layer – no reason to drag his signature designer clothes out to this island), a collapsible tent, a computer, a portable Doppler radar, and several cases of various diagnostic equipment. When they had filled the small boat, it was almost too full to accommodate its two passengers, but Kurt refused to make more than the one trip, especially if Sebastian was determined to see him off. As it was, Sebastian had to give him an arm down into the swaying vessel, which Kurt could have easily steadied with a single command if the man had given him a moment alone. With Sebastian’s hands on his body, Kurt had to concentrate his energy on exactly where those hands were touching without accidentally flipping the boat, all the while with the echoes of that menacing growl ever-present in his head.

Kurt took a chance.

 _Quiet down, you,_ Kurt thought, reaching out with his mind. _I’m trying to focus._

The growl silenced, but what returned was a laugh.

A musical laugh that filled Kurt’s body from head to toe with liquid fire, like a long, breathless drink of Southern Comfort.

Kurt sat by the engine, his body hot, burning from his stomach on out with that laugh embedded deep inside his brain. He itched to get away so he could strip down and take a swim.

He needed one more than ever.

With a long pole, the captain pushed the inflatable dinghy away from the hull of the boat, and Kurt fired up the outboard motor. The excessive weight of the inflatable prohibited Kurt from driving her too quickly, which made him tap his feet madly in aggravation.

He was ready for this journey to be over. He wanted this part to be done. He had a million and one questions detonating like land mines inside his skull – one thought triggering another, setting several off at once, explosion sparking explosion, exposing new ones in its wake.

He wanted to start searching for the answers.

Kurt pulled up to the shore and Sebastian – greener around the gills as they traveled closer to the choppy water – leapt out of the boat on wobbly legs to pull them onto the sand.

Kurt might not 100% like the guy, but he appreciated his enthusiasm.

Kurt swung his legs over the side and jumped into the water to help bring the vessel ashore. His feet touched the water and the entire world shifted, the planet Earth as he knew it spiraling off its track for a few seconds while everything he knew about himself and his life reset. A flash of light swirled around him, moved through him, and he was assaulted by a slideshow of images, pictures of things and people that felt familiar, that his soul seemed to know even though he had never seen them before. Right then, standing in the shallow water, gripping the side of the boat for balance, Kurt knew that he was in the right spot.

Kurt also knew that after Sebastian left, he wouldn’t be alone. The ocean here was rife with power, with something else lurking beneath its depths. The water told him so. A foreign, ancient entity. A kraken? As stupid and childish as it sounded, Kurt thought the idea of a gigantic sea monster to be plausible. There were things beneath the unexplored ocean unknown to humans – but Kurt knew them.

Kurt saw them.

When the ocean spoke to Kurt, he felt its echo in his blood, its vibrations through his skin, transmitting to him everything from offshore currents to seismic activity from the ocean floor. In this way, he translated images, impressions.

He felt the Earth, and every living thing on her, breath as one.

But this time, he touched the water and it called to him by name…

… _a_ name, at least.

_Little one._

“You know, you don’t have to stay here alone,” Sebastian said, jarring Kurt from his communion with the water, hauling the last of the equipment to the beach. “I would be more than willing to keep you company.” Kurt came to, and Sebastian, unaware that Kurt’s mind had drifted off anywhere, gave Kurt one of his patented suggestive winks, followed by a click of his tongue.

But his eyes had taken on a very different expression.

Sebastian worried about him, though why, Kurt didn’t know for sure.

Regardless, it was the most genuine he had ever seen Sebastian.

Kurt fought not to look as stunned as he felt, walking past Sebastian and up onto the shore, fidgeting with his bags, assembling them in the sand.

“Don’t you have a business to run? I mean, if you don’t get back to New York and work, how are you going to afford to keep me out here?” Kurt asked, staying conversational while in his head he begged for the man to turn the dinghy around and go back to the boat. Kurt didn’t want an involvement with Sebastian Smythe that extended outside his wallet. Beside, for all his sincere smiles and worry about Kurt’s well-being, Kurt couldn’t shake the feeling that any dalliance with Sebastian would simply serve as another notch in the man’s bedpost.

Kurt would therefore accept that Sebastian had a passion for his work, but that’s all he could accept.

Sebastian smiled, having made a last ditch effort and acknowledging that he’d been defeated.

That didn’t mean he had any intention of giving up completely. He’d back off and give Kurt his space…for now.

“Well, be careful out here,” Sebastian said, scouring the beach with a judgmental glare and his lip curled, apparently not seeing the incredible potential in this place that Kurt saw. “Don’t drown, don’t get eaten. You have my cell number if you, you know, get lonely…change your mind.”

“I’ll be fine,” Kurt said in response to Sebastian’s persistent stalling. “You should get going. I need to set up here before nightfall.”

Sebastian nodded.

Kurt didn’t know when Sebastian decided to kiss him. He didn’t sense Sebastian make up his mind before the man’s lips connected with his cheek, but he was incapacitated – not by the kiss, but by the ferocious rumble of what sounded like a large jungle cat stalking up behind him.

“Kurt,” Sebastian whispered, his breath ghosting Kurt’s cheek, “you’re trembling.”

 _Of course, I’m trembling, you moron!_ Kurt wanted to scream through lips frozen with fear. _There’s a big bloody mountain lion or something behind us!_

But if Sebastian didn’t hear it, then it couldn’t be real? It couldn’t be there, inches away, ready to strike…could it?

Kurt turned his head quickly to look over his shoulder, his nerves on high alert, peering into the shadows at the tree line, but the animal wasn’t there.

Logically, Kurt knew it couldn’t be there. This island didn’t support that kind of life.

Kurt looked back into Sebastian’s eyes, clouded with concern, and shook his head.

“I’m just cold,” Kurt said firmly. “Now get going so I can put my tent up.”

There was a tense second when Sebastian looked like he might argue, like he might try to insist that he stay, but he stared into Kurt’s steely eyes and backed down.

“Alright,” Sebastian said, backing away and climbing into the boat, his eyes not leaving Kurt’s face until they absolutely had to. “I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

Kurt groaned internally.

Sebastian would be coming back when the boat picked him up.

Kurt was not going to catch any breaks.

Sebastian pulled the chord on the outboard motor and the inflatable took off over the water. Kurt watched the boat lurch over the swells as Sebastian clumsily maneuvered the craft, breaking through an unsuspecting shoal of blue fish hunting in the shallows. Kurt giggled when the boat hit another swell head on and Sebastian flew into the air, almost somersaulting out of the upended inflatable and into the water. Kurt held his breath and waited, wondering who would be expected to dive in after the insufferable man if he did end up in the water. It would most likely be him, since he was closer than the captain waiting in the other boat further out, but Sebastian regained his seat, and by sheer luck alone, made his way back to the larger boat in one piece.

Kurt didn’t watch Sebastian board the vessel, nor did he wait around to see it pull anchor and head back to civilization. The sun had already begun to sink in the sky. There would be a full moon out, so the island wouldn’t be pitch black, but Kurt still needed to get his shelter built. He set to work scoping out his domain, using a crude map he had been given to ascertain the safest location to make camp and where would be the best place to construct his makeshift lab. He put up his tent, tied and secured his food, connected his generator, and got his computer and Doppler online. Then, with the final thin membrane of golden sunlight aglow on the horizon, Kurt stepped down to the water’s edge in search of his would be test-subjects. He knew they were there, hiding below the surface of the wet sand.

This was as good a time as any to introduce himself.

He dug his bare feet into the sand and waited, but he underestimated his intended prey and before he could react to their presence, he felt not one, but seven stabs into the soles of his feet.

Kurt had been warned by his professors to be careful around the mollusks out here - that their venom was more potent in the wild than the specimens they kept in the lab where he studied - but it hadn’t dawned on him by how much. Kurt thought he had sufficiently prepared. He had been injecting himself for weeks with increasingly virulent levels of venom to build up his immunity. When he was younger, when he first discovered his talent, he thought it made him invincible. He experimented too much, got carried away. A few times, hubris almost got the better of him. But he couldn’t take those same chances. He couldn’t pretend that he was going to live forever – nobody did.

Kurt had a job to do - an important job. A job that had the potential to improve the lives of millions suffering from a wasting disease.

Dying at this stage of his project would be inconvenient, to say the least.

These first stings – rapidly paralyzing, extremely fatal, with the frightened creatures pushing as much venom as they could into the puncture wounds - hit Kurt’s nervous system like a whale-sized anvil crashing down on his spine. White hot needles of excruciating agony tore into his vertebrae like claws with nails sharpened into licks of flame. He opened his mouth to scream, but the venom choked the sound off before it left his mouth. His body went rigid, muscles stretching beyond their expectations and then locking into place. Kurt felt the blood drain from his head, his eyes rolling till only the whites showed. He drew his last breath before he fell to the ground unconscious, lying prone in the wet sand as the tide began to creep up the beach.

 


End file.
